Free Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson Page A

the rock. He liked that hymn. Will your anchor hold in the storms of life? He sang it to himself: We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll. Fastened to the rock which cannot move, grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.
    Fastened to the rock. And he thought of Prometheus, chained to his rock for stealing fire from the gods. Prometheus, whose day-time torment was to suffer his liver torn out by an eagle, and whose nighttime torment was to feel it grow back again, the skin as new and delicate as a child’s.
    Fastened to the rock. That was the town crest here at Salts; a sea village, a fishing village, where every wife and sailor had to believe that the unpredictable waves could be calmed by a dependable god.
    Suppose the unpredictable wave was God?
    The man had taken off his boots and folded his clothes neatly on top of them. He was naked and he wanted to walk slowly out to sea and never come back. There was only one thing he would take with him, andthat was the seahorse. They would both swim back through time, to a place before the flood.

It was our last day as ourselves.
    I had woken early to cook the bacon. While it was sizzling, I took Pew his mug of Full Strength Samson, singing to him as I went, Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?
    ‘Pew! Pew!’
    But he was already up and away, and he had taken DogJim with him.
    I looked for him all over the lighthouse, and then I saw that the mackerel boat had gone, and the sea chest. He must have been polishing the brass first thing, because the Brasso and the cloths were still out, and the place gleamed, and smelled of hard work.
    I ran upstairs to the light, where we kept our telescope, to identify the ships that didn’t radio in. I thought I might see Pew in his boat, far out at sea. There was nobody there. The sea was empty.
    It was 7 o’clock in the morning and at noon they were coming for the light. Best to leave it now, as I had always known it, and fasten it in memory, where it couldn’t be destroyed. Why would I want to see them dismantling the equipment and roping off our quarters? I started to pack my own things, though there were not many, and then, in the kitchen, I saw the tin box.
    I knew that Pew had left it for me, because he had put a silver coin on the top. He couldn’t see to read or write, but he knew things by their shapes. My shape was a silver coin.
    Pew had kept loose tea and loose tobacco in this chest. The tea and tobacco were still there, in paper bags, and underneath the bags were bundles of notes, Pew’s life savings, it seemed. Underneath those were older coins, sovereigns and guineas and silver sixpences, and green threepenny bits. As well as the money, there was an old-fashioned spyglass that folded into a leather case, and a number of leather-bound books.
    I took them out. Two first editions: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886. The other books were the notebooks and letters that had belonged to Babel Dark.
    One set of neat bound leather books was written in tiny handwriting and illustrated with ink drawings of flowers and fossils – Dark’s diary of his life in Salts.Wrapped in paper was a scuffed leather folder, with BD embossed in one corner. I undid the brown ribbon, and an untidy pile of papers scattered over my feet. The writing was big and uncertain. There were drawings of himself, always with the eyes scored out, and there were watercolours on cartridge paper of a beautiful woman, always half-turned.
    I wanted to read everything, but there was no time left for me here.
    Well then, this past would have to be dragged into the future, because the present had buckled under me, like a badly made chair.
    The wind-once-a-week clock was still ticking, but I had to go now.
    I unfolded a map of Bristol that had belonged to Josiah Dark in 1828. It was rum-stained where he had used it as a mat. On the waterfront was an inn called